It’s a universally acknowledged fact that most of us have attention spans worse than a goldfish.
While this isn’t strictly true, I do believe whoever came up with it was onto something.
They could be referring to how much more challenging it is to engage prospects and customers, compared to about a decade or so ago.
Consider the facts:
Millennials prefer live chat compared to other communication channels. About 79% of Americans are on Facebook. And, in 2019, 67% of global consumers interacted with a chatbot for customer support.
These disparate statistics reveal that more people are spending time online, across multiple channels, and devices. And therefore, harder to pin down and interact with.
As virtual interactions are becoming the norm, it becomes essential to have a 360-degree view of every prospect or lead you connect with.
And this is just one of the key ways a CRM can transform your sales process and strategy.
This article will explore some of the other benefits of CRM software and explain key features to consider while shopping for one. We’ll also look at how a Work OS like monday.com can double up as a great choice for your sales and CRM software.
What is CRM software?
CRM (customer relationship management) software is — as the name implies — a type of centralized system that manages and tracks all customer interactions.
It gives companies high visibility into their customer relationships, and the state of their business.
A CRM software lies at the heart of a sales department and brings all customer data, knowledge, communications, and updates about leads and prospects in one place for easy reference.
Contact information and other essential knowledge, along with all historic customer communications, can be easily stored and updated in a CRM, giving sales and marketing teams a 360-degree view of prospects and customers.
A good CRM platform will help companies strengthen their customer relationship management and streamline processes to improve customer services, and increase growth and sales.
What are the benefits of using CRM software?
Sales teams rely on different kinds of software to improve their performance, from sales intelligence and email tracking tools, to social selling and productivity apps.
But none are as beneficial as effective CRM.
Here are 4 key benefits of using a CRM platform:
Better contact management
Sales teams can record every customer interaction — email, phone call, negotiation, query, and touchpoint — which facilitates better contact management.
Having access to customer data means that every sales rep can improve their customer relationship management techniques through the sales funnel.
Enhanced cross-team collaboration
A CRM system captures all prospect and customer information within a central system, which allows for quick cross-team referencing and access.
Sales, marketing, and customer support teams can track every customer interaction that can help them do their job better — whether this is making improvements in lead management, a marketing campaign, or customer service.
Sales forecasting
From tracking customer engagement rates to monitoring sales rep performance, sales managers can use analytics and data to help with sales forecasting, and make crucial decisions regarding sales strategy.
Saves time and increases productivity
CRM software has sales and marketing automation features that handle mundane tasks that can range from auto-generating follow-up emails to chase leads to setting up content posts on social media.
A CRM platform that supports sales automation, boosts sales team productivity by taking care of administrative tasks that would otherwise need to be done manually, such as data entry, updating CRM records, and recording client contact information.
What are some key CRM features to look for?
Whether you’re looking to enhance customer experience, get your sales and marketing team working together, or manage lead generation — you’ll need to find the right CRM system to suits your needs.
But, there are dozens of online CRM software options on the market, each boasting distinct features and functionality.
To help you find the right CRM solution for your business, here are 7 critical features to consider.
Good user experience
A CRM that’s intuitive and easy to use will help your sales team navigate and find information quickly. This frees them to focus on important stuff such as lead management.
Centralized database
A good CRM system will allow you to access everything in one place, without needing to jump from one tool to another.
So you’ll have everything that you need — customer data, contact information, documents, tasks, and reports — within the same platform.
Robust reporting
Whether you want to see your sales pipeline at a glance or view in-depth information to track individual customers, your CRM solution should help you gain maximum visibility into your sales operations.
A good reporting system will also help you analyze your sales data to address roadblocks and make continuous improvements to your sales cycle.
Real-time data visualization
Dashboards, charts, and reports that can be easily customized are essential to gain clarity on the metrics that matter.
Whether you’re trying to manage your sales pipeline or view team or project management performance, your data is key to shaping your sales strategy and anticipating future customer behavior.
Cross-department use
Your CRM solutions should support multiple teams to access data within the same platform, to empower your sales, marketing, and customer support teams to work together and share knowledge.
For instance, any leads brought in by the marketing team need to be shared within the CRM so that the sales team can follow up with them.
And the sales team needs to be aware of any outreach via social media or email marketing so that they can better manage their lead or prospect.
Sales automation
Customer relationship management involves a number of cumbersome routine tasks, so one of the most useful CRM features to look for is the ability to set-up sales automation to handle these.
Workflow automation saves time spent on replying to emails, scheduling tasks, and updating information.
For instance, with monday.com, you can trigger custom workflows to manage a sales project or automate an email response to a customer query.
CRM integrations
Your CRM solution should be able to seamlessly integrate with all your existing tools and apps, so that you can manage everything from one place without having to transfer large amounts of data.
Syncing your most-used tools with your CRM means you needn’t jump between different platforms.
How to get started with a CRM software like monday.com
If you’re looking for a centralized sales CRM solution, then monday.com is your best bet.
monday.com is a Work OS that’s designed to help teams manage their workflow from A to Z, within the same platform.monday.com isn’t just a CRM — it’s a powerful, intuitive platform that allows you to build your own customized CRM. One that will be perfect for your team and business.
With monday.com you can view, track, and manage all sales and marketing activities at a glance (plus handle the needs of your other departments).
This includes:
- Lead capturing
- Contact management
- Marketing campaigns
- Order management
- Customer support
- Team tasks and project management
When you’re shopping for a CRM vendor, there are numerous features to consider.
But here’s why monday.com stands head and shoulders above the rest.
- Our customizable dashboards allow you to zoom in on insightful metrics, to help you track your entire sales pipeline, goals, tasks, integrated campaigns, team performance, and more.
- Set up custom sales and CRM automation in a few clicks that allow you to save time and increase productivity by letting the system take care of routine work.
- Sync with your marketing department so that you can coordinate deadlines, run email marketing, and deliver social media campaigns with ease.
- Work from anywhere with the monday.com CRM app — share updates and files, monitor performance, and track your workflow.
- Access a variety of customizable templates for sales, CRM, Real estate, marketing, and more.
It’s easy to customize the monday.com Work OS and build it into a CRM that suits your needs using the steps below.
- Create a contact list
- Categorize board info — incoming leads, active users, lost leads
- Customize your board, choosing from 30 different columns
- Automate your workflow
- Send emails using email integration
- Use Chart views for advanced sales reporting
- Track sales KPIs via the dashboard
For an in-depth guide covering these steps in detail, visit our Support Center.
Ready to choose?
We’ve looked at some of the benefits of using CRM software and have seen how it can be used to effectively manage your sales workflow.
We’ve also reviewed some of the top features to keep in mind while shopping for one.
When you’re evaluating your options, have a clear idea of the CRM features you’ll need.
Maybe that’s an intuitive and user-friendly system that your team will love using, or a CRM tool that has the flexibility to grow with your team.
Or both.
monday.com lets you get greedy. Whatever you need, we’re confident that monday.com is the right CRM solution for you.
Ready to get started with monday.com? Check out our CRM template and start managing your relationships better.
